


All I Ever Learned From Love

by bemusedlybespectacled (ardentintoxication)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Hayffie, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Torture, Minor Violence, Substance Abuse, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardentintoxication/pseuds/bemusedlybespectacled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Next time you want to punish a victor for winning," replies Haymitch, "make sure they have something left to lose."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Ever Learned From Love

Maysilee dies first. Her death isn’t a surprise, and it spares him the pain of killing her, and so he doesn’t focus on it. Not yet. He just runs, and hides, and when the time comes he falls to the ground holding his guts in and hears the cannon fire.

-

They kill his mother first. He hears the Peacekeepers coming up the stairs, and he's too slow. He gets there after the light leaves her eyes, a gunshot wound between them. His shoes slip in his brother's blood, and Flora - he's allowed to shout her name, once, before they slit her throat. He doesn't even get to say "I love you." The Peacekeepers march past him, ignoring his fists and his shouts.

It's not until later, hours after he stops crying and starts thinking about calling someone to collect the bodies, that he notices the rose, untouched by their blood.

-

After the fifth massacre at the Bloodbath, he stops trying and starts drinking. He tells the kids the same advice his mentor told him before she died: don't be stupid and know that you'll most likely die. He tries - oh, he _tries_ \- to get them sponsors, but no one cares about District 12. After a while it becomes a blur: children dressed as coal miners sent into the arena to die in the first hour. It becomes boring to the Capitol, too, after a while, and after fourteen more have died at the Cornucopia he starts getting the Gamemakers breathing down his neck, asking when their next champion will be from District 12. Haymitch drinks more and cares less. At one point, Snow himself comes down and asks politely for a miracle Haymitch can't give him.

"We can make things very hard for you," says Snow.

"Next time you want to punish a victor for winning," replies Haymitch, "make sure they have something left to lose."

When he hears about the Odair boy - all the victors, especially the pretty ones, know about Finnick - he adds those foolish words to his pile of things that need to be drowned by drink.

-

Effie starts working as his escort sometime between deaths: he's stopped counting by now. He doesn't like her. She doesn't like him. The first time she appears at his house, a few days before the Reaping, he throws a bottle at her. His aim is terrible when he's drunk, and all he manages to do is hit her with a shower of broken glass. His only regret is the waste of alcohol. He tells her that _no_ , he's _not_ excited, nor is he proud, and if she has to know one thing about him it's that he hates the Games and can dress _himself_ , thank you _very_ much, and he wouldn't dress like a fucking Capitol citizen if you _paid_ him. She squeaks and bolts out the door, and he expects her to be gone the next year, swapped out for another cloudbrained piece of fluff.

But she comes back the next year. And the year after that. And while he can't say he admires her intelligence or her fashion sense, he has to admit she's got guts. She has to, to keep coming back despite knowing that there is a drunk, angry man with a knife who is unlikely to _stop_ being drunk or angry in the intervening months. She doesn't want to be there anymore than he does - though for very different reasons; he knows she would jump at the chance to escort Tributes from a higher District - but she comes back every year with a new wig, a new outfit, and the same stale smile on her face. Eventually he decides that if he can't scare her off, he might as well make the most of her.

He learns more about the Capitol in ten minutes than he learned in ten years. It helps that she's talkative.

-

For the first time in a long while, he has someone on his side. She tells him all the gossip: Balbina Morrell is hiding a stutter; Blandus, her husband, is seeing a man behind her back; Julia Vibius and Cas Starren are compulsive gamblers who like high stakes. She starts telling him who liked him during his games, who likes an underdog, who's bored with Careers and doesn't mind losing money. He talks the way he needs to, plays them the way they need to be played, even flirts with those he has to if that's what it takes. Afterwards he goes back to his room and drinks to wash the Capitol taste out of his mouth.

Kids keep dying.

Sometimes, if the kids last longer than the Cornucopia, she joins him in the viewing room. She makes stupid comments about how exciting it all is and he drinks and for some reason he doesn't yell at her. There's something oddly comforting about her talking about the kids like they actually stand a chance, and even though they always die, she gives him a few seconds of stupid, useless hope.

When Katniss and Peeta win, she hugs him tightly, ecstatic.

-

When she gets taken, it doesn't make sense. She isn't part of the Resistance, she hasn't made any stupid rebellious gestures like Cinna, and she isn't like Peeta or Annie, who were taken so that Katniss and Finnick would break.

He's on his second bottle when he realizes they're after him.

"Make sure they have something left to lose."

He was so busy with the Games that he never noticed what was right there in front of him: someone who'd gotten too close to him, who he might even love.

She's his something to lose. And the Capitol knows it.

-

They find her in the dungeons, after Snow is captured and Katniss hospitalized. He doesn't recognize her at first, until he realizes he's never seen her without a wig. Her real hair is short, blonde, and soaked with blood and sweat. She puts her head on his shoulder and cries.


End file.
